Through vivid depictions of a dozen family groupings, the author demonstrates that mother animals and birds often train their young in order to supplement their natural instincts. The deer and her fawns, the black bear and her cubs, the fishhawk and her nestlings, the keen-eyed heron, the stupid porcupine, and the mighty moose are some of the animals whose teachings are described in this book. Ages 10-14

364 pages

$13.95

THE GLADSOME LIFE

[309]

O

VER my head soared an eagle one day, his broad vans set
firm to the breeze that was doing his pleasure splendidly,
keeping him afloat in the blue, just where he wanted to be.
At my feet sprawled a turtle, enjoying himself in his own
way. The two together taught me a lesson, which I am glad
now to remember.

The morning fishing was over. A couple of grilse, beautiful
four-pound fish, fresh from the sea, lay snug together in my
fish basket—enough for the day and to spare.
[310] So I gave
up—with an effort, I must confess—the big salmon that had
plunged twice at my Jock Scott, and sat down on a stranded
log to enjoy myself, as the wood folk were doing all about
me.

The river rippled past with strong, even sweep. Below was
the deep pool, with smiles and glintings of light on its
dark face, where the salmon, after their long run from the
sea, rested awhile before taking up their positions in the
swift water, in which they love to lie, balancing themselves
against the rush and tremor of the current. Above were the
riffles, making white foam patches of the water, as if they
were having a soap-bubble party all to themselves. The big
white bubbles would come dancing, swinging down to the
eddies behind the rocks, where a playful young grilse would
shoot up through them, scattering them merrily, and adding a
dozen more bubbles and wimples to the running troop as he
fell back into his eddy with a musical splash that
[311] set all
the warblers on the bank to whistling. Now and then a big
white patch would escape all this and enter sedately the
swift run of water along the great ledge on the farther
shore. My big salmon lived there; and just as the foam
patch dipped sharply into the quiet water below, he would
swirl under it and knock it into smithereens with a blow of
his tail.

So the play went on, while I sat watching it—watching the
shadows, watching the dabs and pencilings of light and the
changing reflections, watching the foam bubbles with special
delight and anticipation, betting with myself how far they
would run, whether to the second eddy or to the rim of the
pool, before the salmon would smash them in their play.
Then a shadow fell on the water, and I looked up to watch
the great eagle breasting, balancing, playing with the
mighty air currents above, as the fishes played in the swift
rush of water below.

He set his wings square to the wind at first and slanted
swiftly up, like a well hung
[312] kite. But that was too fast
for leisure hours. He had only dropped down to the pool in
idle curiosity to see what was doing. Then, watching his
wing tips keenly through my glass, I saw the quills turn
ever so slightly, so as to spill the wind from their
underside, as a skipper slacks sheets to deaden his boat's
headway, and the wonderful upward spiral flight began.

Just how he does it only the eagle himself knows; and with
him it is largely a matter of slow learning. The young
birds make a sad bungle of it when they try it for the first
time, following the mother eagle, who swings just above and
in front of them to show them how it is done.

Over me sweeps my eagle in slow, majestic circles; ever
returning upon his course, yet ever higher than his last
wheel, like a life with a great purpose in it; sliding
evenly upward on the wind's endless stairway as it slips
from under him. Without hurry, without exertion—just a
twist of his wide-set wing quills, so slight that my eye can
no
[313] longer notice it—he swings upward; while the earth
spreads wider and wider below him, and rivers flash in the
sun, like silver ribbons, across the green forest carpet
that spreads away over mountain and valley to the farthest
horizon.

Smaller and smaller grow the circles now, till the vast
spiral reaches its apex, and he hangs there in the air,
looking with quiet, kindling eyes over Isaiah's royal land
of "farnesses," like a tiny humming bird poised over the
earth's great flower cup. So high is he that one must think
he glances over the brim of things, and sees our earth as a
great bubble floating in the blue ether, with nothing
whatever below it and only himself above. And there he
stays, floating, balancing, swaying in the purring currents
of air that hold him fast in their soft arms and brush his
great wings tenderly with a caress that never grows weary,
like a great, strong mother holding her little child.

He had fed; he had drunk to the full from a mountain spring.
Now he rested over the
[314] world that nourished him and his
little ones, with his keen eyes growing sleepy, and never a
thought of harm to himself or any creature within his
breast. For that is a splendid thing about all great
creatures, even the fiercest of them: they are never cruel.
They take only what they must to supply their necessities.
When their wants are satisfied there is truce which they
never break. They live at peace with all things, small and
great, and, in their dumb unconscious way, answer to the
deep harmony of the world which underlies all its
superficial discords, as the music of the sea is never heard
till one moves far away from the uproar along the shore.

The little wild things all know this perfectly. When an
eagle, or any other bird or beast of prey, is not
hunting—which is nine tenths of the time—the timidest and
most defenseless creature has no fear of him whatever.

My eyes grow weary, at last, watching the noble bird, so
small a speck on the infinite
[315] blue background; and they blur
suddenly, thinking of the joy of his great free life, and
the sadness of our unnatural humanity.

As I seek the pool again, and rest my eyes on the soft,
glimmering, color-washed surface, there is a stir in the
still water at my feet. Life is here too; and joy belongs,
not only to the heavens, but to the earth as well. A long
twig from a fallen tree had thrust itself deep into the
stream, its outer end swayed, and rose and fell rhythmically
in the current. While I was watching the eagle a little
turtle found the twig and laid himself across it, one
flipper clinched into a knot to hold him steady, the others
hanging listlessly and swinging to keep the balance perfect
as he teetered up and down, up and down, with the great,
purring river to do his work for him and join his silent
play. And there he lay for half the morning—as long as I
stayed to watch him—swinging, swaying, rising, falling, glad
of his little life, which was yet big enough to know
pleasure, glad of light and motion, and,
[316] for aught I know,
glad of a music in the stream below, the faint echo of the
rustling, rippling, fluting music that filled the air and
the woods all around me.

Life is a glad thing for the wood folk; that is what the
great eagle was saying, far overhead; that is what the
little turtle said, swaying up and down on his twig at my
feet; that is what every singing bird and leaping salmon
said, and every piping frog along the shore, and every
insect buzzing about my ears in the warm sunshine. I
remembered suddenly a curious fact, which till then had
never come home to me with its true significance: in all my
years of watching the wild things—watching, not to record,
or to make a story, but only to see and understand for
myself just what they were doing, and what they thought and
felt—I had never yet met an unhappy bird or animal. Nor
have I ever met one, before or since, in whom the dominant
note was not gladness of living. I have met all sorts and
conditions of beasts and birds at close
[317] quarters; some whose
whole nature seemed bent into a question mark, like certain
jays and turkeys and deer, and one moose that I could not
keep away from my camp for any length of time; some fond,
like a certain big green frog that attached himself to me
with an affection that denied his cold blood; some foolish,
like the fawn that would never follow his leader; some
morose and ugly, like the big bull moose that first watched
and then tried twice to kill me; but never a one, great or
small, among them all, to whom life did not seem to offer a
brimming cup, and who did not, even in times of danger and
want, rejoice in his powers and live gladly, with an utter
absence of that worry and anxiety which make wreck of our
human life.

I stood by a runway in the big woods one morning, watching
for a deer that dogs were driving. From the lake I had
listened to the whole story,—the first eager, sniffing
yelps, the sharp, clear note that meant a fresh track, and
then the deep-lunged, savage
[318] chorus sweeping up the ridge,
which told of a deer afoot and running for his life. I knew
something of the deer's habits in that region; knew also
that the hunters were over the ridge, watching by a lake
that the deer had deserted weeks ago; and so I headed for a
favorite runway, to let the deer slip by me and to club the
dogs away as they came on. For deer hounding and deer
coursing are detestable sports, whether the law allow them
or not, and whether the dogs be mongrel curs that follow
their noses or imported greyhounds with a pedigree that run
by sight, followed by a field of thoroughbreds.

On the way to the runway a curious thing happened. A big
hawk swooped into some berry bushes ahead of me with strong,
even slant, and rose in a moment with the unmistakable air
of disappointment showing all over him, from beak to tail
tip. I stole up to the bushes cautiously to find out what
he was after, and to match my eyes with his. There I saw,
first one, then five or six
[319] well-grown young partridges
crouched in their hiding places among the brown leaves,
rejoicing apparently in the wonderful coloring which Nature
gave them, and in their own power, learned from their
mother, to lie still and so be safe till danger passed.
There was no fear manifest whatever; no shadow of anxiety
for any foolish youngster who might turn his head and so let
the hawk see him. In a moment they were all gliding away
with soft, inquisitive kwit-kwits, turning their heads
to eye me curiously, and anon picking up the dried berries
that lay about plentifully. Among them all there was no
trace of a thought for the hawk that had just swooped. And
why should there be? Had they not just fooled him
perfectly, and were not their eyes as keen to do it again
when the need should come?

I was thinking about it, wondering at this strange kind of
fear that is merely watchful, with no trace of our terror or
anxiety for the future in it, when twigs began to crackle
and a big buck came bounding down the runway.

[320] Near me he stopped and turned to listen, shaking his antlers
indignantly, and stamping his fore foot hard at such an
uproar in his quiet woods. He trotted past me, his great
muscles working like well oiled machinery under his velvet
coat; then, instead of keeping on to water, he leaped over a
windfall—a magnificent exhibition of power, taken as
gracefully as if he were but playing—and dashed away through
the swamp, to kill the scent of his flying feet.

An hour or two later I saw him enter the lake quietly from
another runway and swim across with deep, powerful strokes.
On the farther shore he stopped a moment to shake himself
and to listen to the far-away cry of the hounds. He had run
as much as he wished, to stretch his big muscles, and was
indisposed now to run farther and tire himself, when he
could so easily get rid of the noisy pack. But there was no
terror in the shake of his antlers, nor in the angry
[321] stamp
of his fore foot, and no sense save that of conscious power and
ability to take care of himself in the mighty bounds that
lifted him like a bird over the windfalls into the shelter
and silence of the big woods.

At times, I know, it happens differently, when a deer is
fairly run down and killed by dogs or wolves; but though I
have seen them dog-driven many times, and once when the
great gray timber wolves were running their trail, I have
never yet seen a deer lose his perfect confidence in
himself, and his splendid sense of superiority over those
that follow him. Once, in deep snow, I saved a deer's life
just as the dogs were closing in on him; but up to the
moment when he gave his last bound and laid his head down
quietly on the crust to rest, I saw no evidence whatever of
the wild terrors and frightful excitement that we have
attributed to driven creatures.

The same is true of foxes, and even of rabbits. The weak
and foolish die young, under the talon or paw of stronger
creatures.
[322] The rest have escaped so often, played and run
so systematically till every nerve and muscle is trained to
its perfect work, that they seem to have no thought whatever
that the last danger may have its triumph.

Watch the dogs yonder, driving a fox through the winter
woods. Their feet, cut by briers and crust, leave red
trails over the snow; their tails have all bloody stumps,
where the ends have been whipped off in frantic wagging.
You cannot call, you can scarcely club them from the trail.
They seem half crazy, half hypnotized by the scent in their
noses. Their wild cry, especially if you be near them, is
almost painful in its intensity as they run blindly through
the woods. And it makes no difference to them, apparently,
whether they get their fox or not. If he is shot before
them, they sniff the body, wondering for a moment; then they
roll in the snow and go off to find another trail. If the
fox runs all day, as usual, they follow till footsore and
weary; then sleep awhile, and come limping home in the
morning.

[325] Now cut ahead of the dogs to the runway and watch for the
fox. Here is the hunted creature. He comes loping along,
light as a wind-blown feather, his brush floating out like a
great plume behind him. He stops to listen to his
heavy-footed pursuers, capers a bit in self-satisfaction,
chases his tail if he is a young fox, makes a crisscross of
tracks, trots to the brook and jumps from stone to stone;
then he makes his way thoughtfully over dry places, which
hold no scent, to the top of the ridge, where he can locate
the danger perfectly, and curls himself up on a warm rock
and takes a nap. When the cry comes too near he slips down
on the other side of the ridge, where the breeze seems to
blow him away to the next hill.

There are exceptions here too; exceptions that only prove
the great rule of gladness in animal life, even when we
would expect wild terrors. Of scores of foxes that have
passed under my eyes, with a savage hunting cry behind them,
I have never seen but one that did not give the impression
of getting far
[326] more fun out of it than the dogs that were
driving him. And that is why he so rarely takes to earth,
where he could so easily and simply escape it all, if he
chose. When the weather is fine he keeps to his legs all
day; but when the going is heavy, or his tail gets wet in
mushy snow, he runs awhile to stretch his muscles, then
slips into a den and lies down in peace. Let dogs bark; the
ground is frozen, and they cannot scratch him out.

I have written these three things, of partridge and deer and
fox—while twenty others come bubbling up to remembrance that
one need not write—simply to suggest the great fact, so
evident among all wild creatures,—from the tiniest warbler,
lifting his sweet song to the sunrise amid a hundred
enemies, to the great eagle, resting safe in air a thousand
feet above the highest mountain peak; and from the little
wood mouse, pushing his snow tunnels bravely under the very
feet of hungry fox and wild-cat, to the great moose,
breasting down a birch tree to feed on its top when maple
and wicopy twigs are buried deep
[327] under the northern
snows,—that life is a glad thing to Nature's children, so
glad that cold cannot chill, nor danger overwhelm, not even
hunger deaden its gladness. I have seen deer, gaunt as
pictures from an Indian famine district, so poor that all
their ribs showed like barrel hoops across their collapsed
sides; yet the yearlings played together as they wandered in
their search for food through the bare, hungry woods. And I
have stood on the edge of the desolate northern barrens when
the icy blasts roared over them and all comfort seemed
buried so deep that only the advice of Job's wife seemed
pertinent: to "curse God and die." And lo! in the midst of
blasphemy, the flutter of tiny wings, light and laughter of
little bright eyes, chatter of chickadees calling each other
cheerily as they hunted the ice-bound twigs over and over
for the morsel that Nature had hidden there, somewhere, in
the far autumn days; and then one clear, sweet love note, as
if an angel had blown a little flute, tinkling over the
bleak desolation
[328] to tell me that spring was coming, and that
even here, meanwhile, life was well worth the living.

The fact is, Nature takes care of her creatures so
well—gives them food without care, soft colors to hide, and
nimble legs to run away with—that, so far as I have ever
observed, they seldom have a thought in their heads for
anything but the plain comfort and gladness of living.

It is only when one looks at the animal from above, studies
him psychologically for a moment, and remembers what
wonderful provision Nature has made to keep him from all the
evils of anxious forethought, that one can understand this
gladness.

In the first place, he has no such pains as we are
accustomed to find in ourselves and sympathize with in our
neighbors. Three fourths, at least, of all our pain is
mental; is born of an overwrought nervous organization, or
imagination. If our pains were only those that actually
exist in our legs or backs, we
[329] could worry along very well
to a good old age, as the bears and squirrels do. For the
animal has no great mentality, certainly not enough to
triple his pains thereby, and no imagination whatever to
bother him. Your Christian-Science friend would find him a
slippery subject, smooth and difficult as the dome of the
Statehouse to get a grip upon. When he is sick he knows it,
and goes to sleep sensibly; when he is well he needs no
faith to assure him of the fact. He has his pains, to be
sure, but they are only those in his legs and back; and even
here the nervous organization is much coarser than ours, and
the pain less severe. He has also a most excellent and
wholesome disposition to make as little, not as much, of his
pains as possible.

I have noticed a score of times in handling wounded animals
that, when once I have won their confidence so that they
have no fear of my hurting them willfully, they let me bind
up their wounds and twist the broken bones into place, and
even cut
[330] away the flesh; and they show almost no evidence of
suffering. That their pain is very slight compared with
ours is absolutely certain.

I have sometimes found animals in the woods, bruised,
wounded, bleeding, from some of the savage battles that they
wage among themselves in the mating season. The first
thought, naturally, is how keenly they must suffer as the
ugly wounds grow cold. Now comes Nature, the wise
physician. In ten minutes she has them well in hand. They
sink into a dozy, dreamy slumber, as free from pain or care
as an opium smoker. And there they stay, for hours or days,
under the soft anæsthetic until ready to range the woods
for food again, or till death comes gently and puts them to
sleep.

I have watched animals stricken sore by a bullet, feeding or
resting quietly; have noted little trout with half their
jaws torn away rising freely to the same fly that injured
them; have watched a muskrat cutting his own leg off with
his teeth to free
[331] himself from the trap that held him (all
unwillingly, Gentle Reader; for I hate such things, as you
do), but I have never yet seen an animal that seemed to
suffer a hundredth part of the pain that an ordinary man
would suffer under the same circumstances.

Children suffer far less than their elders with the same
disease, and savage races less than civilized ones; all of
which points far down to the animal that, with none of our
mentality or imagination or tense-strung nervous
organization, escapes largely our aches and pains. This is
only one more of Nature's wise ways, in withholding pain
mostly from those least able to endure it.

Of purely mental sufferings the animal has but one, the
grief which comes from loss of the young or the mate. In
this we have read only of the exceptional cases,—the rarely
exceptional,—tinctured also with the inevitable human
imagination, and so have come to accept grossly exaggerated
conceptions of animal grief.

[332] A mother bird's nest is destroyed. The storm beats it down;
or the black snake lays his coils around it; or the small
boy robs it thoughtlessly; or the professional
egg-collector, whose name and whose business be anathema,
puts it into his box of abominations. The mother bird
haunts the spot a few hours,—rarely longer than that,—then
glides away into deeper solitudes. In a few days she has
another nest, and is brooding eggs more wisely hidden. This
is the great rule, not the exception, of the gladsome bird
life. Happy for them and for us that it is so; else,
instead of the glorious morning chorus, the woods would be
filled always with lamentations.

When the young birds or animals are taken away, or killed by
hungry prowlers, the mother's grief endures a little longer.
But even here Nature is kind. The mother love for helpless
little ones, which makes the summer wilderness such a
wonderful place to open one's eyes in, is but a temporary
instinct. At best it endures but a few weeks,
[333] after which
the little ones go away to take care of themselves, and the
mother lets them go gladly, thinking that now she can lay on
fat for herself against the cold winter.

If the time be yet seasonable when accident befalls, the
mother wastes but few hours in useless mourning. She makes
a new nest, or hollows out a better den, or drops her young
in deeper seclusion, and forgets the loss, speedily and
absolutely, in rearing and teaching the new brood,—hurrying
the process and taking less care, because the time is short.
It is a noteworthy fact—you can see it for yourself any late
summer in the woods—that these late-coming offspring are
less cared for than the earlier. The mother must have a
certain period of leisure for herself to get ready for
winter, and she takes it, usually, whether the young are
fully prepared for life or not. It is from these second
broods largely that birds and beasts of prey keep themselves
alive during times of hunger and scarcity.
[334] They are less
carefully taught, and so are caught more easily. This again
is not the exception, but the great rule of animal life.

And this is another of Mother Nature's wise ways. She must
care for the deer and partridge; but she must also remember
the owl and the panther that cry out to her in their hunger.
And how could she accomplish that miracle of contradiction
without exciting our hate and utter abhorrence, if she gave
to her wild creatures the human griefs and pains with which
they are so often endowed by our sensitive imagination?

Of these small griefs and pains, such as they are, the
mothers alone are the inheritors. The male birds and
animals, almost without exception so far as I have observed,
have no griefs, but rather welcome the loss of the young.
This is partly because it leaves them free to shift and feed
for themselves—your male animal is essentially a selfish and
happy creature—and partly because it opens to them anew the
joys of winning their mates over again.

[335] The second great reason for the gladness of animal life is
that the animal has no fears. The widespread animal fear,
which is indeed the salvation of all the little wild things,
is so utterly different from our "faithless fears and
worldly anxieties" that another name—watchfulness, perhaps,
or timidity, or distrust—should be given to it in strict
truth.

This animal fear, be it remembered, is not so much an
instinctive thing as a plain matter of teaching. Indeed,
inquisitiveness is a much stronger trait of all animals than
fear. The world is so full of things the animal does not
understand that he is always agog to find out a little more.

I was sitting on a stump one day in the woods, plucking some
partridges for my dinner. A slight motion in the underbrush
roused me from my absorption; and there was a big bull
moose, half hid in the dwarf spruces, watching me and the
fluttering feathers, with wonder and intense curiosity
written all over his ugly black face. And I have caught
bear and deer and crows and
[336] squirrels and little wood
warblers at the same inquisitive game, again and again. If
you sit down in the woods anywhere, and do any queer or
simple thing you will, the time will not be long before you
find shy bright eyes, all round with wonder, watching you
with delicious little waverings between the timidity which
urges them away and the curiosity which always brings them
back again, if you but know how to keep still and disguise
your interest.

If you find a young bird or animal, in nest or den, young
enough so that the mother's example has not yet produced its
effect, you will probably note only two instincts. The
first and greatest instinct, that of obedience, is not for
you to command; though you may get some strong hints of it, if you
approach silently and utter some low, cautious sound in
imitation of the mother creature. The two which you may
surely find are: the instinct to eat, and the instinct to
lie still and let nature's coloring do its good work of
hiding. (There is another reason for
[337] quietness: a
bird—and, to a less extent, an animal—gives forth no scent
when he is still and his pores are closed. He lies quiet to
escape the nose as well as the eyes of his enemy. That,
however, is another matter.) But you will find no fear
there. The little thing will feed from your hand as readily
as from its mother, if you catch him soon enough.

Afterwards come the lessons of watchfulness and timidity,
which we have called fear,—to sort the sounds and sights
and smells of the woods, and to act accordingly; now to lie
still, and now to bristle your pinfeathers, so as to look
big and scare an intruder; now to hiss, or growl, or
scratch, or cry out for your mother; and now, at last, to
dive for cover or take to your legs in a straightaway run,—all
of which are learned, not by instinct, but by teaching
and example.

And these are not fears at all, in our sense of the word,
but rules of conduct; as a car horse stops when the bell
jingles; as a man
[338] turns to the right, because he has learned
to do so, or bends forward in running, or jumps forward when
he hears an unknown noise close behind him.

To make a rough and of course inadequate generalization, all
our human fears arise from three great sources: the thought
of pain or bodily harm, the thought of future calamity, and
the thought of death. Now Nature in mercy had kept all
these things from the wild creatures, who have no way of
making provision against them, nor any capacity for faith,
by which alone such fears are overcome.

First, in the matter of bodily harm or pain: The animal has
lived a natural life and, as a rule, knows no pain whatever.
He likewise has never been harmed by any creature—except
perhaps an occasional nip by his mother, to teach him
obedience. So he runs or flies through the big woods
without any thought of the pains that he has never felt and
does not know.

Neither does any thought of future calamity bother his
little head, for he knows
[339] no calamity and no future. I am
not speaking now of what we know, or think we know,
concerning the animal's future; but only of what he knows,
and what he knows he knows. With the exception of the few
wild creatures that lay up stores for winter—and they are
the happiest—he lives wholly in the present. He feels well;
his eyes are keen and his muscles ready; he has enough, or
expects enough at the next turn of the trail. And that is
his wisdom of experience.

As for death, that is forever out of the animal's thinking.
Not one in a thousand creatures ever sees death—except, of
course, the insects or other wild things that they eat, and
these are not death but good food, as we regard a beefsteak.
If they do see it, they pass it by suspiciously, like a
tent, or a canoe, or any other thing which they do not
understand, and which they have not been taught by their
mothers how to meet. Scores of times I have watched birds
and animals by their own dead mates or little ones. Until
the thing grows cold they treat
[340] it as if it were sleeping.
Then they grow suspicious, look at the body strangely, sniff
it at a distance, never touching it with their noses. They
glide away at last, wondering why it is so cold, why it does
not move or come when it is called. Then, circling through
the underbrush, you will hear them calling and searching
elsewhere for the little one that they have just left.

So far as I know, the ants, some tribes of which bury their
dead, and the bees, which kill their drones at the proper
season, are the only possible exception to this general rule
of animal life. And these little creatures are too unknown,
too mysterious, too contradictory a mixture of dense
stupidity and profound wisdom to allow a positive theory as
to how clearly they think, how blindly they are instinctive,
or how far they are conscious of the meaning of what they do
daily all their lives.

Bodily harm, future calamity, death,—these three things can
never enter consciously into the animal's head; and there is
[341] nothing in his experience to clothe the last great enemy, or
friend, with any meaning. Therefore are they glad, being
mercifully delivered from the bondage of our fears.

I am still sitting on the old log by the salmon pool, with
the great river purring by and the white foam patches
floating down from the riffles. A second little turtle has
joined the first on his teeter board; they are swinging up
and down, up and down, in the kindly current together. The
river is full of insect life below them; they will eat when
they get ready. Meanwhile they swing and enjoy their little
life. Far over the mountain soars the great eagle, resting
on the winds. The earth has food and drink below; he will
come down when he is hungry. Meanwhile he looks down over
the brim of things and is satisfied. The birds have not yet
hushed their morning song in the woods behind me; too happy
to eat, they must sing a little longer. Where the pool
dimples and rolls lazily the salmon are leaping in
[342] their
strength; frogs pipe and blink on the lily pads riding at
anchor; and over their heads in the flood of sunshine buzz
the myriads of little things that cannot be still for
gladness. Nature above and below tingles with the joy of
mere living—a joy that bubbles over, like a spring, so that
all who will, even of the race of men who have lost or
forgotten their birthright, may come back and drink of its
abundance and be satisfied.

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